Reading the mail content of an mbox file using python mailbox

Question

I am trying to print the content of the mail ( Mail body) using Python mailbox.

import mailbox

mbox = mailbox.mbox('Inbox')
i=1
for message in mbox:
    print i
    print "from   :",message['from']
    print "subject:",message['subject']
    print "message:",message['**messages**']
    print "**************************************" 
    i+=1

But I feel message['messages'] is not the right one to print the mail content here. I could not understand it from the documentation

It is clearer to use: `for i, message in enumerate(mbox):`, you could remove then `i=1` and `i+=1` — Nir, Dec 03 '20 at 12:28

Uyghur Lives Matter · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-26T03:31:08.040

21

To get the message content, you want to use get_payload(). mailbox.Message is a subclass of email.message.Message. You'll also want to check is_multipart() because that will affect the return value of get_payload(). Example:

if message.is_multipart():
    content = ''.join(part.get_payload(decode=True) for part in message.get_payload())
else:
    content = message.get_payload(decode=True)

edited Oct 26 '14 at 03:31

answered Oct 25 '14 at 22:32

Uyghur Lives Matter

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@ cpburnz So it is something like http://pastebin.com/AcYvDQM9 But it did not work. :( – Technopolice Oct 25 '14 at 22:46
@LukasGraf It didnt print the message body – Technopolice Oct 25 '14 at 23:07
@Sidnext2none You need to `print content` because you're storing the message content in `content`. – Uyghur Lives Matter Oct 26 '14 at 03:32
@cpburnz Aah...Such a silly mistake I made. Problem solved. Thank you. – Technopolice Oct 26 '14 at 08:59
1

@AllWorkersAreEssential I get the error "TypeError: sequence item 0: expected str instance, bytes found" while i try to print(content) – Salih Jan 31 '21 at 14:09
@Salih You can just put it as `content = ''.join(str(part.get_payload(decode=True)) for part in message.get_payload())` and make it be a string. Not sure what that might cause as far as decoding goes but it will get rid of that error. – Hercislife Jun 24 '21 at 20:59

score 19 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 07 '18 at 19:38

19

def getbody(message): #getting plain text 'email body'
    body = None
    if message.is_multipart():
        for part in message.walk():
            if part.is_multipart():
                for subpart in part.walk():
                    if subpart.get_content_type() == 'text/plain':
                        body = subpart.get_payload(decode=True)
            elif part.get_content_type() == 'text/plain':
                body = part.get_payload(decode=True)
    elif message.get_content_type() == 'text/plain':
        body = message.get_payload(decode=True)
    return body

this function can give you message body if the body is plain text.

edited Dec 07 '18 at 19:38

matanster

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answered Jul 18 '15 at 08:27

jOSe

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How do I add support for 'multipart/alternative' ? – Mark Colan Jun 15 '16 at 10:33
You can replace content_type, – jOSe Jun 24 '16 at 23:04

Reading the mail content of an mbox file using python mailbox

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